Got on the ol' internet last night and explored the musical offerings. "Why not see what's out there?" I asked myself. "It's been awhile".
Settled on a 'Billboard Top 100' songs (of 2018) You Tube playlist. Now whether this was the actual list compiled by Billboard magazine or something that a guy put together in his garage and posted on You Tube was questionable. You can't be sure anymore and it looked legit so what the heck I dived in.
Well......
Somebody thought these were the top 100 songs but it certainly wasn't me. I was astounded at how utterly bland and repetitious just ten of them were and dreaded listening further. I tried to imagine myself duty-bound, like a guy sentenced to community service or something, in order to muster up the will to push through to the end but I could not find it in me to try and go all the way.
The first ten I viewed featured the likes of Drake, Ariana Grande, and some others who I can't remember the names of. Please don't think I'm some old fogey dissin' modern day music and pining for the old days because, brother, music is either listenable or it's not. Visual video fluff might dazzle you, and slick instrumental and voice (re)production might be a sign o' the times, but as far as bein' ear candy, this stuff is not.
I wanna plead with the young people that they're being duped and to turn away from this, because most of it is junk. But what the hell do I know? You oughta see the views these videos are compiling!
Now I know the 'artists' out there don't want to hear that their product is shoddy. They probably could care less because they're makin' bank on their ‘music’ and just like at any business, whether they put out good product or not, as long as people keep buying the stuff they'll make more of it. The music industry used to have quality control but man, those days are gone and now the masses are being fed some serious cattle fodder.
There's good stuff out there somewhere but it's daunting to have to plow through tons of material to find it. A lot of the videos I watched and listened to had handsome lads and lithe ladies, the men were smooth crooners and the women songbirds, Ariana Grande seemed to be a nice person and Drake as well (he was handing out wads of cash in “God’s Plan”, bless him for that), but if I was blind and just listening to this I would be suffering. Young uns', it wasn't always this way!
There used to be mainly good stuff out there as a rule, and the bad stuff was kept on a shelf a fair distance away away from whatever device might be able to broadcast it. Safeguards were in place. They called that shelved kind of music 'B sides' and late night DJ's would only play it at two or three a.m..
Why did they do that? Advertisers! Audience! People listened to the radio because that's where the music came from and if it wasn't good, they'd turn to the next station or turn the damn thing off. But the system doesn't work like that anymore. You are now the filter, saddled with that onerous role, one in which you are asked to give the artist a thumbs up or down, a ranking, a 'like', or to subscribe to their feed, and man, that is work! Who wants to work at listening to music?
To be fair, and to silence any critics who say I haven't tried, I have tried. I've gotten on Spotify, searched You Tube, perused Pandora, and scanned the playlist of the best local (and very eclectic) radio station in town. In addition to that, I have tried in many other ways to seek out good music with the intention of restoring and refreshing my playlist but how much torment can a man stand? Song after bad song I suffered through the last time I went all the way through a top 100 list, thinking that at least ten of them might be good (I set my sights very low) and then at the end of that excruciating ordeal, none of the songs were deemed to be sufficiently satisfying enough to be worthy of being listened to again! (As far as building a playlist with marginal material, I have tried that before and have rued making that decision). Going all the way through that last ‘Top 100’ playlist and coming up dry was traumatizing and made me extraordinarily hesitant to attempt to (ha!) do what used to bring a great deal of joy to me, which was to spend hours filtering through albums and tapes and CD's.
Like a gold mine, coming across this (except for Feliciano!)
Joseph Pearson- Unsplash.com
Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I don't like the beat, rhythm structure, lyrics, or the voices that make up the peculiar flavor of modern music. But if that's so, how can I listen to Classical, Jazz, Funk, Rock, Pop, and Reggae stations on the radio and damn if not every song but every tenth or fifteenth song is good?
DJ's have saved me from having to filter, that's why! They have gone through the filtering process to the best of their ability and are presenting me with a playlist that they think is good, or good enough. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it, they have to have a passion for music driving them because, music lover that I am, I have found that I’m just not up for that degree of sifting.
You know, in some ways the internet has been a godsend. When it comes to doing research, finding out information on how to fix your make and model of car’s door handle, or checking out new recipes for a Keto diet, internet sites are invaluable but in other ways the portal has backslid on us and saddled us with unwanted and time consuming tasks. Seems that many times when I initiate a project on the internet and am using a new app or program that is proclaimed to be 'intuitive' and 'user friendly' it ends up being more painstaking an endeavor than building a highly detailed scale model of the H.M.S. Agincourt, complete with sails and rigging.
Music sifting is just one glaring example of this sort of backsliding. I'm frustrated as hell about it. But what comes to mind in dealing with this issue is an old Chinese saying:
"Give a difficult job to a lazy man and he'll find an easier way to do it"
I’m that lazy man and I will find a way, because I can listen to my top 100 songs for only so long!
